When the Lights Went Out
by Blue eyed fantasies
Summary: Sometimes it takes a miracle, or a disaster - depending on how you look a it - to realise that something you never even knew you wanted is missing from your life. For Kurt, it's getting stuck in a subway car with a complete stranger.
1. The Lights Went Out

'_The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with._' -Harper Lee, 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

It should have been just another night. Another cross in a sea of red and white calendars carrying him relentlessly towards his future. Dull and monotonous but safe.

Of course, that's never the way things work out.

He'd stayed later than usual at the office and watched the dresses and jumpers and shoes and scarves flurry past his eyes so quickly that they eventually blurred into one big blend of fabrics. He told himself he wasn't doing this because of the text that he received that morning. He even almost managed to convince himself. And then he gave in.

Sometimes, he just needed this endless assault of fashion to stop his mind from unravelling at the seams into piles of knotted thread. It's better to think in simple blocks of colours, not emotions. Definitely not emotions. Colours can be organised neatly into little boxes. Emotions just end up...messy and him lying broken on the floor next to them, trying to figure out where they all went and how the hell they all fit inside him.

But colours can't go on forever; sooner or later you have to go home. And so, after a polite "we're closing the office now Kurt", he'd sighed and collected his things, resigning himself to the cold task of getting home.

The sights and sounds of New York seemed somehow muted to his ears as if he was under water. And for the first time ever, he didn't look up to see the sky, just kept walking, shoulders hunched, invisible walls up around him somehow higher than the surrounding skyscrapers. The lights held no appeal for him that night, their heavenly fluorescence never seeming so revolting. Instead, he drank his coffee greedily, clutched in his vice-like hands. He'd had too many accidents when wading through solid blocks of people and ending up with an all too familiar slap of hot coffee in his face and on his clothes to not be careful so he held the coffee cup reverently in his arms like a national treasure.

Because even though he knew no-one was doing it out of malice, it was still a twisted reminder of his high school days, the only difference being that the beverage was several degrees warmer and contained steamed milk and coffee, not ice and red dye number 7. Still, even accidents hurt.

Kurt's almost ridiculous dependency on coffee or maybe just any form of caffeine was getting out of hand. He figured it never lets you down even when everything around you crumbles.

It only just occurred to him as he was nearing the subway station how sad it was that it came down to a coffee cup being the one reliability in his life.

Not taking his last furtive glance at New York as he usually did, Kurt descended the steps. He'd missed his usual train so he had to walk briskly to catch the last one running for the night. 11.03. The doors shut with a definitive click as he took his usual seat in the empty carriage - not that he expected anyone at this time - just as the train lurched forwards. He peered in his black phone screen; not a hair out of place. There really was no rush, no need. Everything was so eerily efficient.

Kurt sighed. When did he become so boring?

And that was when the lights went out in New York City, for Kurt anyway.


	2. Who's There?

**Yes, this story is partly based on a Friends Episode... I don't that or Glee. **

* * *

When Blaine woke up it was cold. And he didn't know where the hell he was. It wasn't an unusual occurrence.

He was lying on something altogether not very comfortable. For a moment, all he was aware of was the moulded plastic digging into his back painfully. Again, not unusual. You end up where you end up, whether that be a bed, a sofa, the floor, the shower, the toilet bowl or even a bush (once or twice - not something to repeat).

Blaine slowly began the anguished journey back to self-awareness.

His body felt like it was cased in stone and with many a creak and groan, he stretched his arms and legs. His eyes seemed to be glued shut and he kept them closed anyway to block out the light that would flood in when someone inevitably opened the curtains. His eyelids weren't tinted with the ominous glow of orange light though so he guessed it was early morning or someone had blackout curtains.

And just when he was beginning to think things might be ok, the headache kicked in and the world decided to tip sideways. _I'm going to kill whoever decided it was a good idea to give me four shots in a row last nigh_t, Blaine thought. He slowly began to sit upright, rocking precariously for a few tenuous seconds and he got the horrible feeling that he was about to vomit. Blaine lay back down again.

Slowly, it passed.

He tried to take a few deep breaths as his muddled brain attempted to think what person he knows would have such awful, uncomfortable furniture. Maybe it's that alternative type of chair that's supposedly meant to look all artistic and shit but is not actually meant to be used. Either way, he needed to find a bed. Fast.

His head was a strange enigma - heavy as lead and yet his thoughts slipping like air through his fingers. Where was he yesterday? A party. Yeah, no shit. He suspected one of those Brooklyn parties. Perhaps it was a friend of a friend... That Simon Smithers guy? Samuel Smith? It was a double S initial anyway. A hazy image of a smirky, brown haired boy who looked like an eery cross between a meerkat and Edward Cullen came to mind.

Ok, so he was at a party. In Brooklyn with SS Meerkat. Maybe he left early with him? Yeah, he left early. But no, not with him. Blaine shuddered.

He decided that it was about time that he attempt to get up again and, wincing, manoeuvred his stiff joints into a vague half sitting, half lying position. At the feel of cool glass and plastic against his back, he jolted forwards.

And then he opened his eyes.

But it was like he hadn't opened them at all. That is, it was still as dark as before. This wasn't a normal kind of darkness though. This darkness was obsolete, no hint of the streetlights to soften the sharp edge of the black, no reassuring glint of light against glass, no bright sunlight streaming in.

No light.

_It must be some dickhead playing a trick on me_, Blaine decided. He felt around him, looking for some sort of light switch or even just a person to latch on to in the dark. Nothing. Just cool glass and some soft of metal pole? _Right. Enough with this shit._ A sudden bright idea to just use his phone appeared. But when he reached into his pocket, he found nothing. That was when he remembered dropping it and laughing for some ridiculous reason and then just not picking it up. Blaine groaned quietly. _Idiot, idiot, idiot. What the fuck do I do now? Idiot. Always getting yourself into these..._

That was when Blaine heard it: shaky, stuttered breathing, dancing too quick and too fast and getting caught in the throat. The clear sign of someone panicking.

A light, ghostly and too bright in the absolute darkness appeared, lighting up a face in its ethereal glow.

A high, soft voice echoed through the darkness, nearly breaking Blaine's heart with its tiny hint of despair. "Who is it? Wh-who's there?"

Eyes sparkled in the darkness like spotlights. Blaine could just make out a chestnut brown glint of hair and a stretch of porcelain skin before the phone screen went off and they were blanketed in the oppressive black once more.

And Blaine suddenly wasn't scared anymore. No, he was hooked on eyes with no identifiable colour and swirls of chestnut brown. Perhaps in a slightly more sober state he would have been more worried about the desperate situation at hand instead of wondering _would it be inappropriate to say 'you're beautiful' at this moment_?

He settled instead for a small (but hopefully reassuring) "My name's Blaine," into the darkness.


	3. Panicking and Breathing and Panicking

**I do not own Glee. I am merely someone with an unhealthy addiction to it and a load of ideas in my head that never get written.**

* * *

"Alright, it's alright. Don't worry."

The guy next to him exasperatedly waved his hands, his breath came in little annoyed huffs. "M'not..worrying. I'm..._panicking_!"

"Aren't they the same thing?" Blaine asked, genuinely serious.

"Completely different!" The guy shouted, waving his arms around so much that he nearly knocked Blaine on the head. The guy shook his head and then clutched it in his arms. Blaine could see through the cage they formed around his head that his chest was expanding rapidly, like a drowning man surrounded by nothing but water.

And Blaine, surrounded in all of his air, felt helpless watching from the sidelines.

"It's ok," he said because he felt like it was expected of him. "It's all going to be ok."

The guy next to him raised a skeptical eyebrow. They were both sure that things were definitely not ok. In fact, Blaine wasn't sure if they could get worse. And so they were both unsure as to who Blaine was trying to reassure at this point.

He was sure he'd only woken up a few minutes ago but he felt like he'd been in this darkness for days.

At first, Blaine hadn't believed him.

He had literally just introduced himself to the man with the beautiful eyes holding the cell phone. "I'm Blaine." There had been a pregnant pause. And then "Blaine," the voice said, as if he were testing it out, tasting it as it curled along the tip of his tongue. Blaine couldn't help thinking that it was such a pretty sound, breathy and high.

Blaine really needed to get his priorities straight in an emergency.

Thinking about how pretty a voice sounded when stuck in an unfamiliar, pitch black darkness should not be top of his list. He shook his head to clear it. Not the best idea. He winced. _Hangover, remember the hangover. You could write it on your hand, but then you wouldn't see it._ Blaine almost laughed to himself. _2 minutes and I'm already going crazy._ He didn't laugh.

"Yeah, could you uh, maybe turn the light back on so I can move over to you?" Blaine moved himself into a sitting position, shoving his maniacal thoughts hangover to the side, and planted his feet on the floor. A dull thud sounded. _Where am I?_ thought Blaine, not for the last time.

The man holding the phone spoke again. "Oh yeah, just..._fuck_." There was a clatter that in the silence was magnified to a gunshot and they both flinched. The light lurched drunkenly, casting grotesque shadows across the walls and ceilings. _So I'm inside, _thought Blaine. For a moment he had been convinced that he was lying on a bench and all of the stars had vanished.

Blaine inwardly groaned because there was only one possibility of what that clatter might be. "Shit, dropped...the phone."

Of course, he would get stuck with the idiotic klutz.

"Well pick if up then," Blaine hissed. He normally wouldn't make such a bad first impression but he guessed he could be excused; these weren't the best circumstances to be meeting. He stood up, hand gripped tight on a metal bar beside the seat. His whole body protested but he ignored it.

There was a scuffling sound, eerie metal on metal scraping through his ears and why does everything seem so loud when it's quiet? The sound of fast breathing filled the area, fear almost tangible blazing like fire through the darkness and seeping into his skin.

_How the hell did I end up here?_ He thought desperately.

"Got it," the now breathless voice said as the small light reappeared. _No shit_, thought Blaine sulkily but he moved towards it hungrily.

He could just make out that the man was wearing a blue shirt and that, no he wasn't freakishly small, he was sitting down. Blaine felt around for a moment and slowly navigated his way across the darkness.

The light wasn't very strong, only just enough. Blaine stubbed his toe on something (luckily it was soft) and nearly tripped.

"Sorry...that's my bag!" the voice said. He didn't see Blaine's glare as he moved to carefully sit next to him.

"Phew," Blaine said, just to fill the silence. The man next to him was still breathing heavily, a slight rasp forming in his voice. Blaine turned to him. He could see the wide pupils, the pale face bleached of all colour, the slightly tremor of his thin frame.

"Are you ok?" Blaine asked wearily. He didn't know if he had the strength to look after another person at the moment. "Are you like...asthmatic or something?" _Please say no, please say no._

The man shook his head and held up a finger. _Thank God._ The other guy sucked in a few breaths of air.

And then he said, completely calmly, "Don't be...alarmed but I think I'm having...a panic attack."

So Blaine didn't believe him. People don't just announce things like that out of the blue.

Instead, he laughed. "You're shitting me."

The guy shook his head vigorously.

_Ok, maybe he **believes** he's having a panic attack but..._

"Are you sure?" he squeaked because, from the limited things he'd heard, they were pretty bad.

The guy just looked at him in the most utterly sarcastic way possible, as if to say _no, I'm joking. I'm really a middle-aged sales assistant trying to sell you a holiday cruise to Thailand what the fuck do you think?_ His eyes were somehow, even in the dark, so expressive and Blaine could tell if he'd had full control of his breathing, he would have said something like that.

The light went out again.

_Well shit. _

And now here they were, sitting God knows where, with Blaine unsure as to who out of the two of them was the more freaking the fuck out more. He racked his brain for non-existent medical knowledge and, when that failed, tried to think of what they did on TV.

"Um, just try to breathe."

This time the panicked guy actually did respond. "The...fuck...d'you think...I'm _doing_?"

Blaine rolled his eyes and amended his previous thought. Of course he'd be the one to get stuck with a snarky guy having a panic attack. He almost would have preferred someone with the IQ of a two-year old or no, even a two-year old. At least they wouldn't verbally attack him between breaths.

"_I_ don't know!" he said, throwing his hands up. "That's what they normally do on TV. I'm not a fucking _doctor_. I just fucking woke up with a hangover and you're over here freaking the shit out of me with your ghost appearance stuff and then _you're_ the one to have the freaking panic attack. I'm just some random dude trying to get home. What do _I_ know?"

The guy held up his arms in a sort of half-assed 'I'm sorry' gesture. Blaine could see in the little light that his hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking actually and Blaine had the strangest impulse to wrap his arm around him. He didn't. He listened to the relentless breaths, fluttering like a caged bird in his chest, for a few beats. Then, he sighed and decided to try and be helpful.

"You're doing it all panicky and fast. Just, um, shit. Look, do it slow like this. Um...in...and out...and in...and out." Blaine could see the man visibly trying to follow his directions. His breathing slowed, just a little.

Then the damn phone light blinked out again and the panicked guy's breathing kicked up another notch. He appeared to be frozen as he didn't make any move to turn the light back on. Blaine remembered it had been resting on his lap. He reached one hand out to try and grab the phone. Unfortunately for Blaine, it was dark and he was just a few inches too high.

And this is where the worst of situations somehow...worsened. It was almost impressive.

"_That_..." the man was now screeching. "Is...my _crotch_...your hand...is touching...my _crotch_!" Blaine quickly darted his hand away and finally grasped the slick metal and plastic of the phone.

Meanwhile the man next to him was now fully trembling, his skin almost grey as he mumbled "oh God...trapped in...a subway car...and being...molested...by a hungover...rapist...in the...middle...of a panic...attack...what the fuck...next...?"

And at that moment, that really inappropriate moment, Blaine started to laugh. Because, really, what else could go wrong? It was such an unbelievable series of extremely bad luck, like one of those really overdramatic TV soaps.

"Add...psychotic...to the list. Why...are...you...laughing?"

Blaine's laughter subsided into little snorts. "I have pink sunglasses in my pocket and a pet warbler called Wesley Nick David Jefferson the 57th of Dalton at home. I'm not going to rape you."

Panicked guy was silent for a moment and Blaine could have sworn his breathing slowed minutely. "That doesn't...help your...case."

Blaine thought about it for a moment. "No, it really doesn't does it?"

He could have sworn the guy snorted between breaths.

"You don't need to wor...panic about that. I'm not going to rape you," he finally said in a reassuring voice. He hoped it was reassuring. _Oh god, do I always come across this creepy?_

The other guy seemed to accept this with a nod. It was then that Blaine realised something: he hadn't asked his name and he couldn't exactly go on calling him 'panicked guy' or 'the other guy' in his head for the rest of who know's how long. _How rude of me,_ Blaine thought. After leaving Dalton, he seemed to have lost all of his manners. _How to bring this up subtly?_

"I have an idea. Let's try and, uh, distract you. Um...do you have a name?" Blaine had forgotten that he wasn't really known for his subtlety.

"No, they...didn't g-give me...one." The sarcasm was so thick you could see it though the fog of panic.

Blaine huffed. "I was only trying to help but if you're going to be all snarky with me..." He turned so that his back was to the other guy, arms crossed in mock stubbornness.

"Sorry...sarcasm s'my...defence...m-mechanism. It's...K-Kurt."

"Kurt," Blaine said, echoing how he'd repeated his name earlier on, as if to taste the sound of a lifetime in one word. "Like from the Sound of Music?"

Kurt seemed impressed. He nodded slightly.

"That's really cool," Blaine continued. "I wish I was named after something like that. My mom just flipped open the baby book and did an eenie meenie miney mo. She picked Blessing but my dad's kind of an atheist and then they saw that I had a dick and it was a girl's name so she had to re-pick from the Bl section."

Kurt was blinking at him rapidly.

"Sorry, was that an over share? I do that a lot."

Kurt just shook his head minutely. "My, er... my mom just...liked the musical," he said.

Blaine smirked. "That's what they want you to believe. It was probably just on in the background whilst you were being c-..." Kurt placed a clammy hand over his mouth. Blaine could feel the tremor in it.

"That. _That_ is...over-sharing. Or...or just over-speaking. Just...don't talk...for a while."

Blaine decided not to talk and Kurt removed his hand. He tried to think what to do. Kurt was still breathing too heavily and was shaking. He decided to just go with his instinct.

He started to yawn and stretch until his arm was almost curled around Kurt's shoulders. Kurt's breathing hitched just as Blaine was hovering slightly above his shoulder. "A-are you...putting the _move_ on me? Really? _Now_?" His voice was now impossibly high.

Blaine stifled his laughter. "No!" He said quickly. "I'm just, um, trying to comfort you."

Kurt blinked for a few minutes. "Oh," he gasped. Blaine paused, waiting. Then, he saw Kurt gesture at him, as if to say _go on_. Blaine settled his arm around the boy's shoulders and scooted him a littler closer, trying to absorb some of the fear and the tremors.

"Th-thank you," Kurt whispered.

"You're welcome." They sat in silence for a minute.

"Why don't you tell me something about yourself Kurt?" Blaine said.

"Other... way round," Kurt suggested quietly.

Blaine nodded. "Oh, uh, okay," he said. "Where should I start?


End file.
